


Adam Zampa and the Werewolf of Wagga Wagga

by enpassant



Category: Cricket RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-18 03:31:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14844845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enpassant/pseuds/enpassant
Summary: okay so please, if you’ve clicked on this to read, READ THIS FIRST. can’t stress enough. read me read me READ. ME.this is one chapter in a three chapter story and it’s chapter TWO. why? because I can’t write things in order and I didn’t for this story, which I didn’t even think of or start writing til last week. I’ve made every attempt to pull off a sleek, finished product for reveal and I can’t. chapter one is a joke as it currently sits and is totally unfit for public consumption. sorry.so that leaves me with the fun task of trying to explain wtf is happening in ch.2 here since you haven’t read plot-heavy ch.1. buckle yourselves in, kiddies.it’s 1979. just because. I’ve transposed real (cricketing, eg.) events from 2011 back to ‘79.zampa is a wizard of the jk rowling type except no he didn’t go to Hogwarts. read ch.1 for lame details later but in short, he grew up in Australia. we have our own magic culture I assume.so are maddo, khawaja, and assorted cricketers.khawaja is on the australian national quidditch team (aka a big deal) which is in Sri Lanka for a tournament. he sends letters to Zampa by animals. Zampa thinks he needs new friends.zamps and maddo are in love or should be whatever I don’t care anymore this story is so hard to write, just have a spoiler I don’t care.but maddo is back in Queensland playing cricket with various young emerging players like starc and kane richardson (it’s 2011 in 1979, remember.)so yes, all your fav Aussie boys couldn’t care less about being wizards really. they just want to play cricket.did I mention it’s 1979. there’s reasons for that. quick history lesson for non-HP nerds:- that’s two years before baby Harry Potter destroys Voldemort- the first wizarding war is raging in Britain/throughout Europe. for the purposes of this story and expounded on in other chapters I assumed Australia and SL were relatively uninvolved in the general scheme of things- Sirius Black and Remus Lupin are in Australia in 1979 for reasons clearly explained in ch.1 lol sorry xxxenjoy except you won’t because you’re missing out on all the Zampa/Maddo tension from ch.1 and stuff sorry don’t hate me I had to reveal SOMETHING please love me anyway Ella the rest is obviously coming ASAP





	Adam Zampa and the Werewolf of Wagga Wagga

**Author's Note:**

  * For [awkwardsorta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardsorta/gifts).



> okay so please, if you’ve clicked on this to read, READ THIS FIRST. can’t stress enough. read me read me READ. ME. 
> 
> this is one chapter in a three chapter story and it’s chapter TWO. why? because I can’t write things in order and I didn’t for this story, which I didn’t even think of or start writing til last week. I’ve made every attempt to pull off a sleek, finished product for reveal and I can’t. chapter one is a joke as it currently sits and is totally unfit for public consumption. sorry. 
> 
> so that leaves me with the fun task of trying to explain wtf is happening in ch.2 here since you haven’t read plot-heavy ch.1. buckle yourselves in, kiddies. 
> 
> it’s 1979. just because. I’ve transposed real (cricketing, eg.) events from 2011 back to ‘79. 
> 
> zampa is a wizard of the jk rowling type except no he didn’t go to Hogwarts. read ch.1 for lame details later but in short, he grew up in Australia. we have our own magic culture I assume. 
> 
> so are maddo, khawaja, and assorted cricketers. 
> 
> khawaja is on the australian national quidditch team (aka a big deal) which is in Sri Lanka for a tournament. he sends letters to Zampa by animals. Zampa thinks he needs new friends. 
> 
> zamps and maddo are in love or should be whatever I don’t care anymore this story is so hard to write, just have a spoiler I don’t care. 
> 
> but maddo is back in Queensland playing cricket with various young emerging players like starc and kane richardson (it’s 2011 in 1979, remember.) 
> 
> so yes, all your fav Aussie boys couldn’t care less about being wizards really. they just want to play cricket. 
> 
> did I mention it’s 1979. there’s reasons for that. quick history lesson for non-HP nerds:  
> \- that’s two years before baby Harry Potter destroys Voldemort  
> \- the first wizarding war is raging in Britain/throughout Europe. for the purposes of this story and expounded on in other chapters I assumed Australia and SL were relatively uninvolved in the general scheme of things  
> \- Sirius Black and Remus Lupin are in Australia in 1979 for reasons clearly explained in ch.1 lol sorry xxx
> 
> enjoy except you won’t because you’re missing out on all the Zampa/Maddo tension from ch.1 and stuff sorry don’t hate me I had to reveal SOMETHING please love me anyway Ella the rest is obviously coming ASAP

 

* * *

 

 

In Sri Lanka Adam’s life returned to a sense of normalcy, one where Voldemort and werewolves were not pressing concerns and cricket was. He was training with and playing for Colombo Cricket Club with a team comprised of local talent, an English batter, and Cam. His days were spent going over his technique with Davison, their coach, and learning how to make Muggle-esque magic happen on the famed South East Asian pitches. Usman sent birds (and turtles, and cats) from their Quidditch camp in Kandy with news (‘Nearly lost our trial match today so Punter was furious, but then Watto scored some late goals and sent a bludger at Sanga and Gilly caught the snitch so we drew and I think he’ll forgive us eventually. And I’m sorry to disappoint you like this but the mail service here takes forever.’) and Nic called him by radio sometimes which almost never worked properly because Adam had barely gotten his magic P-plates and almost certainly had stuffed up several important aspects of its creation. When it wasn’t spontaneously turning into a chicken or booming out Gaelic songs, he pieced together that the emerging players’ tournament was going well for Nic’s team and badly for Cutting’s, and that Sirius and Remus had been up to watch a game once and were having little luck in Wagga so far. Talking to Nic was a fraught undertaking when he was rooming with Cam who was very much a Muggle, and had quickly gotten the idea that Adam’s secretive late night calls that had to be taken out behind their dorm were to whoever he was ‘banging’ back home.

The English batter was a skinny little blonde boy of five called Joe masquerading as an up-and-coming 21-year-old. Adam liked him enough until he was bowling at Cam one day and hit him dead in the balls with a self-proclaimed jaffa and Joe burst into giggles as Cam writhed in agony, after which point Adam liked him even more. Joe was rooming with Kemal, CCC’s prodigal wicketkeeper son who already had a double hundred to his name, and who Adam very quickly realised was a wizard. They took to spending their evenings all together in their dorms watching the Sri Lankan team play in England on a television that Adam tried very hard to enhance the picture quality of without raising suspicion; he raised the eyebrow of Kemal instead when he accidentally shot a stream of water out of his hand at the screen. In the corridor on the way back from the showers after that he learnt that Kemal was the disappointing son of Dinesh Premadasa, recently retired Appleby Arrows seeker who had once led his team to the dizzying heights of fifth on the ladder in the British and Irish Quidditch League back in 1965. Kemal had so little interest in Quidditch he was sure he had been written out of the will. "I could reach Bradman heights and he’d still not be able to look me in the eye, you know? Well that, and I’m gay."

Kemal had a boyfriend living in Jaffna with very green eyes and hair that fell into them. They met him on an overnight trip up north they harassed Davison into letting them go on, where they wound up staying in an old building overlooking Casuarina beach. Jaffna was gorgeous and flat and busy and quiet and hot and palm trees by the thousands. They rented bicycles that Kemal did a little something to when the others weren’t watching so that the pedals did most of the work for them. They rode down streets lined with old houses and old shops and wove around buses and giggling children until Cam complained he was going to drop dead in the heat so they stopped to sprawl out in the shade of a palm on the green lawns of the University. Kusal was smart and studying business while working in a fruit shop and was quick to laugh at anything remotely funny Kemal said. Adam watched them guiltily from the corner of his eye as they lay close together near him, gazing up at the deep blue and the racing clouds, Kusal with a finger wrapped around one of Kemal’s where their hands lay in the short distance between their bodies, the rise and fall of their chests in sync. When he inevitably fell asleep after a while, it was Cam who shook him awake softly with a smile that made his eyes crinkle and Adam’s face burn. They dropped the bikes off two hours late to the irritated owner and walked back to the house with ice creams that Adam subtly charmed into tasteless dairy-frees that melted on the third lick.

The house had eight perfectly nice bedrooms and Adam found himself sharing with Cam. They played Monopoly over dinner until it got too heated and Kemal looked ready to hex Joe, who was definitely cheating somehow despite the half-decent wandless _Revelios_ Adam tried on him with increasing desperation throughout the game. Kusal later suggested they go to a club in Jaffna that he frequented, and they agreed on the proviso he was absolutely dead beyond resurrection if Davison found out.

Kusal’s club ended up being one of those establishments invaded by wizards somewhere along the way, where magic lingered subtly-to-obnoxiously in every corner and the Muggles smoking and grinding against each other gave no indication they knew or cared. They made their way past the sea of bodies on the dancefloor to the bar, where Kemal smirked as he handed Adam a glass of what turned out to be Ogden’s Old disguised as vodka. Adam hadn’t thought to wonder if Kusal knew what Kemal was up to this point, but then Kusal had ordered ten shots of gigglewater and handed two to Adam and it was obvious. He wondered what Cam would think of it all and amused himself by imagining the reaction he’d get if he pulled out his wand and levitated the bowler.

There was a band playing but there seemed to be two audio loops to tune into - if Adam cocked his head to the left he could hear the dulcet tones of the greasy-haired adolescent singing _Insight_ on stage, to the right he found reprieve in Joy Division live.

"I don’t know if we should’ve brought him," Cam half-shouted at him over the music, gesturing at Joe who had gone off to dance and looked suspiciously drunk off the single shot Adam had seen him with. Kemal shrugged innocently when Adam gave him a look.

"We’ll babysit," Kusal offered, yanking Kemal with him, whose expression changed to mirror the one he’d given in their last match when he’d swung at a wide and gotten out on 94. Adam laughed as he watched the three of them push to the front of the crowd.

Cam asked the bar for whiskey and tumblers and then motioned to a table in the back. They emptied a glass each as _Stairway to Heaven_ began and Cam poured them both another.

"Gonna bring someone back tonight?" He asked Adam, fishing a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and lighting one on the flickering candle hovering on the table which Adam supposed must look like it was resting on something to the Muggle eye. "Warn me first, I don’t want them snooping through my shit."

"I don’t know why you’re sharing with me anyway, you know. You’d think—," and he downed his glass instead of finishing the sentence.

"It’d be easy, you know. Look at them," Cam nodded at the crowd of bodies on the floor. "Five minutes in that and you don’t pull then it’s you with the problem."

"Charming," said Adam.

Cam blew smoke into his face on purpose and tapped his cigarette against the filthy ashtray. "That’s me. So maybe I should be the one to pull, come to think on it."

There was a wayward snitch darting around behind Cam’s head, who was looking at Adam with narrowed eyes and a grin that spelt a challenge.

So he said, "I’ll sleep in Joe’s room, then," and Cam leaned forward and said, "that’s interesting, isn’t he in the study with just the pullout?" and the snitch was fluttering right by his ear, winking gold. The singer was taking requests. Cam’s eyes were fixed on Adam.

"Fuck off. Do you want another drink," he asked.

"Not just yet." Iggy Pop began to scream in his ear, the bone-crunching guitar riff of _I Wanna Be Your Dog_ making Adam feel exposed somehow. "I want to get to know you first."

"What."

"Do you come here often?" Cam took a drag of his cigarette and then stubbed it out. He had both elbows on the grimy black tabletop and his shirt was clinging to his front, and there was something in the set of his shoulders and his jaw that reminded Adam of an arrow in the second before release. The snitch had disappeared.

Adam stared at him for a long moment and swallowed.

Maybe it was Cam sucking in his lower lip as he waited for a response, eyes like magnets, or maybe it was the oppressive sweaty heat that no one had bothered to charm away, or maybe it was the sudden, white-hot vindication spooling in his stomach. Cam who was staring at him in the mornings when Adam rolled over, Cam who had insisted on applying half the first aid kit to his hand when he’d fallen and scratched it at training one day, fingers light and lingering on his wrist.

Cam who was apparently deftly skilled in suspending reality without the aid of potion or spell.

So he said, "Sometimes. And you?"

Maybe it was Nic and the photo he’d sent over that had arrived in the mail that morning, depicting post-match beers in the changeroom at Allan Border Field, and Richardson on the floor between his legs.

"First time, actually. I’m not from here."

"Oh?" Adam needed another drink. "Where are you from then?"

"A shitty little flat in Colombo. I’ll tell you all about its broken front lock and the intricacies of the loo’s flushing mechanism if you get me that drink."

Adam did, feeling Cam’s eyes on the back of his head the whole way to the bar. When he returned _The Chain_ was playing. Cam was smoking again.

"So why are you in a shitty little flat in Colombo with a broken door and bad plumbing?" He asked as he sat back down and pushed Cam’s drink across the table, feeling like he was in a dream.

Cam smiled, all teeth, pupils dilated and glinting. "I’m an athlete. It’s temporary. I’ll be gone soon." He leaned back in his seat, fingers drumming in time on the tabletop to the music. "It’s a bit of a shame, really. Think I’m running out of time to make something happen with my roommate."

"Oh?" Adam’s heart was beating somewhere up high in his throat, a hedonistic high rushing through his veins.

"He’s a cute little thing. Blonde and vegan and with a mouth on him I’d like to stick my tongue in multiple times a day." Adam wasn’t sure he was breathing properly. "But I think he’s got a man back home. So that’s me left to stew in my disappointment in seedy pubs and seek him out in every blue-eyed 5 foot 8 thing I find in even seedier clubs."

He was aware, dimly, that he would probably regret this, that he was drunk and shouldn’t, really shouldn’t, Kemal and the others could come over at any moment.

"And have you? Found him here tonight?"

Cam held out what was left of the cigarette. Adam shook his head. He squashed it in the tray and downed the drink Adam had brought him.

"Do you want to come outside," he said, hands flat on the table ready to push himself up, eyes dark.

Adam didn’t know what he wanted. He followed Cam outside.

They moved from sweat and noise to dry heat and near-silence, Cam finding his palm and leading him by it down the street a ways to a darkened space at the edge of the club’s building and the next. The moon was a scythe above them. Cam pushed him against the bricks and into his mouth, hand sneaking up to weave in his hair, tasting like smoke and whiskey and hunger and sweat. Adam kissed him back, feeling almost weightless and detached somehow, Cam biting on his lip and his jaw and sucking his way down Adam’s neck, pressing him harder still against the wall. Behind him the building seemed to pulse faintly, the almost imperceptible hum of a place touched by magic, like a whisper of wind through an unmoving garden or the intangible thing that crackled around a wizard if you were close enough to tell, like the air around Nic when he was holding Adam was always a degree warmer than it had a natural right to be.

"Cam," he said, his bottom lip bruised. Cam, who’s thigh had slipped between Adam’s legs pulled back to gaze at him in the shadows, eyes feral and mouth red and hot and wet.

"What," he whispered, breath ragged and sharp. "Do you want to go back to the house?"

"No." Adam’s head was heavy and the weightless warmth had disappeared. He felt like he’d taken a step too close to the edge of something dangerous and there was panic of a type hammering in his chest. Cam was too near and too real. He pushed off the wall and detangled their bodies, stumbling a little, feeling drunker than he had before.

"Adam," Cam said, reaching for him, as he had been doing in some way or another ever since they’d landed in Sri Lanka.

"I’m going for a walk," he said, already going, feet heavy on the pavement as he moved off down the street. The softest of breezes was flitting overhead through the leaves of the palm trees that lined every street in the city. It was very late. Adam turned onto the nearest lane and then the next, lost in the sleepy streets on the outskirts of Jaffna until he came to stop on a dirty bench under the dim orange glow of a street lamp.

He felt brittle and raw and ashamed, as if he’d stepped over a line he could no longer pretend didn’t exist. He searched for the palpable jealousy that had twisted inside him that morning, tighter and tighter in his guts as he’d tried to look at anything but Kane’s wide smile as he tilted his head up at Nic and the hand curled around his leg. Whatever he’d felt was now replaced with a shame that made him inwardly cringe. Every mark Cam had sucked into his skin was burning.

 _Miss you and everything_ , Nic had scrawled on the back of the photo, after ten lines regaling the events of the game and how Starc had saved them from a draw. _Not the 24/7 animal rights crusading but I could probably listen to a solid half an hour of house elf outrage. Come back soon. I don’t know how I’m expected to handle another three weeks of Maxwell. He’s more annoying than you which is impossible but there you go. Sorely tempted to Bat-Bogey him, watch this space. Let’s talk about the house when you get back. Cutting seems to think Usman wants to move states to get away from you. Kisses, Nic._

When the sky began to grey at its edges and Adam’s head was beginning to pound, he moved out of the dull lamplight and into the shadows of a parked car to Apparate. The lights were off in the house when he popped into existence down by its gate. Waves lapped gently against the shore as he made his way up the gravelly drive past the beach. He found Joe spread out on the nearest lounge inside, snoring outrageously. So Cam had covered for him. He closed his eyes at the foot of the staircase for a moment and considered, tired and homesick, then made his way up to his room.

If Cam heard him come in, he did not say.


End file.
